Tag: health

It is good to remind ourselves so now and then of the tremendous self-healing powers or our body and mind.

Without even noticing it, the trillions of cells our bodies are always striving toward harmony and health.

We are hard-wired to grow and become stronger every minute of our lives from the moment of conception until we get beyond our reproductive age around the age of forty. Even though our bodies experience a gradual decline in strength and performance after forty, the ability of our bodies to heal themselves remains, albeit at a slower rate.

Automatic programs, comparable to those that keep our hearts beating and our bodies at the right temperature, constantly work in the background breaking down and renewing and repairing body tissue.

Aside from these systems that operate entirely on their own without us being aware of it, another system, our immune system, works 24/7/365 to disarm and remove invaders from our bodies that otherwise could have caused serious harm to our health.

It is an amazing ability of our bodies to do whatever it takes to restore and maintain health after injuring ourselves or contracting an illness. Sometimes, the impact of the injuries or the force of the attackers is too much for the body, meaning that we have to call in the help of doctors and modern medicine to help our bodies to overcome the threat.

It is good to keep in mind that, although we perceive it often differently, doctors and modern medicine don’t actually heal our bodies; they create the optimal circumstances for our bodies to do their healing work.

We have been granted stewardship over our bodies. This means that we have the responsibility to let the automatic defence and healing programs in our bodies do their work, to support them and to refrain from doing whatever interferes with their good work.

Staying Healthy, Energetic and Strong Our Entire Life

We support our bodies in the first place with eating food that is biologically correct and therefore recognized by the billions of bacteria and other organisms that live in our gut. These bacteria and other organisms are collectively known as our microbiome or gut flora and play an important role in the processes of digestion, assimilation, immune function and brain health.

Biologically correct food is organically grown, raised without the use of pesticides, hormones and antibiotics and prepared for consumption without chemicals to enhance taste, color, smell and shelf-life.

The effect of hormones, antibiotics and food chemicals is that it harms and diminishes the gut flora and otherwise leads to harmful effects in the body.

We also support our body by performing activities that get and keep our muscle system in good condition. The reason for this is that our muscle system forms the centre-point of good health because it pulls all other body systems forward in their function.

The third way we can support our bodies is by maintaining a state of relaxation as often as possible since this is the state our bodies need for healing and recovery.

Stronger muscles lead to stronger bones, tendons and ligaments, and a stronger cardiovascular and respiratory system. Examples of other body systems that benefit from a strong muscle system are the digestive system, the nervous system, the hormonal system and the lymphatic system.

Many people in our modern society have lost the connection with their body, meaning that they preferably choose for food that tastes good and gives comfort in the short term without ever wondering whether what they eat really benefits their internal body systems.

They don’t link responses from their body with the food they have been consuming, with their physical activity, or lack thereof, and their overall mental and emotional state. Instead of recognizing pain and discomfort as a signal from their body that an issue needs to be addressed, they ignore the issue or suppress the symptoms with painkillers or other types of medication.

If something is out of alignment, meaning our body is not functioning properly, we can take for granted that somehow somewhere we throw sand in the normally smoothly operating programs that keep our bodies healthy, strong and energetic.

And here is the good news…

Our bodies are very forgiving, meaning that even though we may not have been treating it optimally, it improves all its healing and repairing abilities almost immediately the moment we take the steps that create the right environment for our bodies to the work they are hard-wired to do.

Eating healthy, exercising properly while maintaining an overall state of relaxation are the tools we have at our disposal and can use every hour of the day.

If we do it consistently, persistently and patiently, we can see our physical, emotional and mental health gradually and dramatically improve in a matter of months.

Knowing all this is one, actually doing it is another. If you realize that you keep falling back into habits that don’t serve you despite your best intentions and hard work, I suggest you send me an email and see how we can work together to get you moving forward again.

This blog, 13 Damaging Effects of Stress on Our Health is the third in a series of four that explains how the three tools; healthy eating, safe and effective exercising and maintaining a state of relaxed awareness can help us to get the most out of our lives.

Follow this linkto read the first article about Safe and Effective Exercising and this link for the second article on healthy nutrition (both open in a new window).

This blog is dedicated to the third tool; cultivating a state of relaxed awareness for flow and focus and to master stress.

Let’s begin from the point that the natural state of our body and mind is relaxation. The official name for this condition is homeostasis; the state of balance in the body where all body functions occur smoothly and the demand for energy matches with the supply of energy.

Put in other words, homeostasis allows our body and mind to run like a smoothly operating machine and vehicle, making it possible to function at our best.

Stress is what disrupts the state of relaxation or homeostasis. Whatever we perceive as a negative, coming to us through one or more of our five senses seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling, can lead to stress.

Of course, the level of stress we experience depends on many circumstances and therefore always varies. Think of a sliding scale that goes from zero to ten, where zero equals total relaxation and ten a full-blown panic attack.

Emotions precede stress. When the psychiatrist Paul Ekman travelled around the world, he found that, regardless of the part of the world he visited, people had the same facial expressions for certain emotions and concluded that these facial expressions are universal products of human evolution.

He distinguished the following six emotions; anger, fear, disgust, sadness, surprise and happiness.

The first thing to notice is how negatively biased we are as human beings. The first four of the six emotions are negative, number five can be positive or negative and only number six is positive. It may explain why we keep our guard up most of the times and stay on the outlook for threat and danger.

Following the wisdom of ancient cultures, I like to divide emotions into two main categories; fear and love.

The sequence is a follows: challenging events cause instinctive body reactions called emotions that in turn lead to stress with the function to activate the feed, fight, flee and freeze survival actions to move us away from danger or pain to safety or pleasure, after which the body would return to its natural state of relaxation where all internal systems run smoothly.

Here we arrive at a critical point. Our internal body systems don’t run smoothly when we are stressed. To maximize the chance of survival, all body functions that don’t play a role in overcoming the perceived danger are immediately and almost entirely shut down. Examples of these body functions are digestion, assimilation, healing, recovery and rational thinking.

When in a state of stress, blood is shunted away from the gut section to legs and arms for fighting or running and to the brain for fast thinking related to survival. This is no problem if the main cause is staying alive and only lasts for a short while, but becomes a serious problem if stress becomes chronic as so often is the case in our modern society.

Some physical effects of stress on the body are:

Decreased nutrient absorption and decreased metabolic function as a result of decreased oxygenation and gastrointestinal blood flow. This is why our stomach hurts when you eat in a stressed state.

All these symptoms can evolve into emotional and physical disorders such as heart attacks, stroke, hypertension, immune system disturbances as well as autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. Stress can also to neurological disorders like Parkinson’s disease. In fact, stress affects all body systems.

Stress is an important function to activate the survival reactions to overcome danger and bring us back to safety but can become a danger in itself if we don’t recognize its symptoms and let it continue to do its devastating work. The first step to mastering stress is realizing its presence. Unfortunately, many people trivialize the symptoms, simply deny them or confuse being stressed with being busy. Other people feel powerless against the stress they experience, see themselves as victims and endure the effects to the best of their abilities.

The obvious next step is making the decision to reduce the stress followed by actually taking action.

Stress is a natural reaction and can be very helpful to bring us back to safety or to maximize our performance. Examples of the latter are athletes, musicians and actors who use stress as a tool to charge their batteries for peak-performance.

If this is not the case, then there is every reason to master the effects of stress and not let it consume you.

In my presentations and coaching, I give people effective tools and techniques to break free from the negative impacts of stress on their overall health and well-being.

If you want to explore how you or the audience can benefit from our working together, I invite you to visit my website patrickstreppel.com and scroll down on the page to send me a message and start a conversation.